


Disarm Yourself

by calltoarms



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 01:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calltoarms/pseuds/calltoarms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dawn and dusk are maddening things in the terrains masking dangers; hardly any humanity is to be seen for miles. The face Aurora seeks is wrapped in helmet, iron, leather and sheathed sword, the comfort and solace in the promise of physical armour inviting. Beneath the lonesome wanderer wonders if the stars will make an exception this once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disarm Yourself

In the light of a fire are two faces, two hopes, two distortions of beauty. The wisps of smoke move upwards in a cool night air as the cicadas hiss; Mulan is cautious, meticulous enough to have dampened cloths for the flames should wayward men arrive in the evening’s vulnerability to plunder all goods. She hasn’t loosened the straps and buckles on her armour, keeps herself rigid and completely tensed. Aurora often comments that she is prepared for a battle that hasn’t come, and so should sit still to eat for just a minute, mumbling some more about indigestion and other adverse effects.

Mulan says nothing, does nothing and keeps her palm pressed against the wrapped hilt of her sheathed blade, all the while shaking beneath the shell of worn leather.

“You do not listen to my commands,” the princess sighs, “will you not sit to have a meal? We are weary from our travels and I have not looked into a human face today. It seems I have not for a while. We have seen beasts, reptiles and monsters with rough beards. Let me look into your face.”

“Forgive me, my liege, but I refuse to obey a command that puts you at risk.”

The warrior moves about again, her feet silent upon the forest floor of sunken leaves, fallen branches and grubs. Her gloves tighten about her weapon, eyes flicking to the canopy above and the brook metres away. Her joints are now fluid, muscular curvature poised for battle. She attempts to ignore the voice at her ear, a pleasant harrowing, and wills herself to skirt and secure the perimeter.

“Your battle is fought best by my side, Mulan. I wish to give you strength. Let yourself rest, or choose to be in no shape to protect who you have vowed to give your life for,” Aurora approaches her soldier, dainty fingers and knuckles tugging on the intricacies of a Chinese warrior’s attire, “lie with me, now.”

At this Mulan takes herself to be chipping away once more. Her stance wavers, Mulan knowing only now that her battles are bursts of light from this sphere of glowing energy and her days brightened nights, perhaps, feared, as the true battlegrounds of uncertainty stay within Princess Aurora. By the princess’s side she is unarmed, unguarded, unprepared and unnecessary. They look for another, search for Mulan’s release; Mulan has all of this injected into her bloodstream each dawn to push herself into submission again.

“My lady,” Mulan turns, removes a glove and feels the stiffness leave her hand as she caresses the other’s fair complexion, “I seek to rid our area of threats. I will be by your side quickly. You will see human faces. You will see the prince. For now, rest your mind. Do not worry your dress as you do now.”

The frantic rubbing and creasing both cease. Aurora steps back, allows her Mulan to find the primal carnivore once more and watches the evening’s sun lose itself to a sickly curve of the moon. Her eyebrows are furrowed, lips pursed and heart darkening, vision stripped and tossed into a realm of thrashing nightmares.

Trunks, bark and vinery hit the ground in the skilled swinging of a sword and meet the undergrowth to leave only two possible exits, discouraging followers from infiltrating the site. Sixteen times Mulan circles their area. Sixteen times Mulan splits young shoots in an atrocity reflective of inner torment. Seventeen times Mulan wishes the prince were dead. Seventeen times Mulan is drawn to the dirt in apologetic whimpers. Eight times Mulan nears the tent and seven times she retreats from the first call-to-battle, pretends she cannot hear the bugle sound in desperation.

Somehow Mulan is sure there will be bloodshed and this time it is unwelcome, just as the cold that creeps in is embraced. She puts her sword into the ground, sits against it and watches the dappled greys from the sad strings of moonlight, shrunken from grace and glory.

In the morning Aurora asks to see a human face and Mulan is busy hacking at the exits, only glancing back once to have a maiden’s charm thrust against her body, shoving against her soul, with all her might, against a locked door. Mulan whisks herself away and tears down the shrubbery and thorns and marches onward with what can only be described as an expression of seeping discomfort.

“Have you no concern for a dying soul!” Aurora cries every hour or so.

“I have concern for your well-being, yes,” is Mulan’s diplomatic answer, careful as always.

“I spoke of your dying soul,” Aurora finally whispers, taking Mulan’s arm as they trek through the same obstacles, lifting their feet over the same bloody corpse; it’s like they’ve been going in circles, pacing the same floor as the silly wealthy do in ballrooms, Aurora thinks.

“I am well, healthy, and perfectly capable of going forward.”

“Have you?” Aurora offers a short laugh, “Have you really, Mulan? Is this your quest or mine?”

“It is yours,” Mulan responds.

“Have you nothing of your own to chase?” Aurora asks, sadly and solemnly, looking unto a face that is growing dim with grimness.

“Your quest is mine.”

Aurora takes that answer for now. She pulls at an arrow’s tail and lets it fly, seek and find its mark in the innards of a bounding young hare, disembowelling it and letting it fall upon its side. Mulan moves to collect the bounty, puts her sword to the animal’s throat and slits is cleanly.

As they eat, one with revised footwork and the other with abandon, having no sense for social cues in the terrain of the wild.

“Why do you stay with me?” Aurora turns again.

“I stay with my vow in mind.”

“I dismiss you.”

“Do you?” Mulan snorts, “Do you dismiss me?”

“I do; go now to find your own quest.”

The silence is pregnant with tension, taut, straining tension. Neither moves. Neither speaks up. Mulan inches forth with the deadliness of a cobra and the sleekness of a leopard against a bare tree. She presses the back of a hand to Aurora’s heart.

“Be still if I have shaken you. Why do you dismiss me?”

Aurora trembles, “you wish to be here, but will not say why.”

“Must there be the ‘why’? Can you not do now with the ‘how’?”

Aurora settles for stoking the fire again and uselessly catching sparks with eager grabs, back to the sky and eyes knowing nothing but blazing, scalding redness. The heat cannot warm a sad heart, however, and Aurora puts her hand to the warrior’s cheekbone.

“Will you not disarm yourself, my warrior? I ask for your company. It is more than what you offer, but I too offer my company in return; if that in itself is not of value to you, tell me what is. I look for Philip just as I look for humanity in all its rawness, Mulan. Show yours to me. Cast the armour aside, for there is something as deterring beneath,” Aurora coaxes.

“Your companionship is of great value to me, princess,” Mulan looks upon the stars in daytime, finding only the brightest one to distract herself with; “I hope you do not mistake my intentions. If you will gift me time, the time to find my own bit of humanity, I will hand it to you, just as you handed me your heart.”

The princess, however, has unbuckled a tightening strap upon Mulan’s exoskeleton in this time, removing the shoulder-piece as she pulls it from its metallic bars. Mulan watches in uncontrolled astonishment, she having lost power over her limbs. In a lengthy period Aurora has disarmed the warrior, leaving behind trousers and a tunic.

“Give me your sword,” Aurora holds out a hand and almost collapses with the weight of the sharpened tool when Mulan begrudgingly offers it.

Mulan almost falls onto her face in delirium.

“That must feel much better.”

“I feel naked. It feels beyond torturous. I have no weapon. I have nothing.”

“Take me instead,” Aurora takes Mulan’s hands and places them upon her waist, stepping in closer and aligning a temple with Mulan’s jaw-line and breathing audibly against hot, sweaty skin, “Am I generous enough a gift?”

“I do not dare take you, milady.”

Even as she says this, Mulan feels as if the weight of the armour is back upon her, a sword’s bound hilt at her command. She has lost the rumble of the earth beneath her feet, but quakes at the shots of adrenaline sprinting the miles of her veins. Aurora is wonderful underneath her palms.

“You took me long ago. Keep me now.”

The bandits rest that night, keep their broadswords from attack and their bludgeons from unholy blood. The princess and her warrior take refuge in a night’s young calm and slumber.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
